


Strawberries in Summertime

by polytropic



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, background Leonard Snart/Mick Rory, but the focus is gen so, content warning: discussion of smoking and quitting smoking, content warning: mention of anxiety attacks, content warning: mention of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 11:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10386138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polytropic/pseuds/polytropic
Summary: Caitlin has been deeply, if distantly, endeared to her cousin Mikey ever since he ruined the Beauregard-O'Leary-Rory Family Reunion of 2002 by showing up wearing a hand-lettered shirt reading "The Gay Cousin".(robininthelabyrinth posted a "what if Caitlin Snow and Mick Rory were cousins?" thing and I went "wait that's HILARIOUS, I'm writing that.")





	

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this was a tumblr post (http://robininthelabyrinth.tumblr.com/post/158270103079/unexpected-family-members-leonard-snart-or-mick) by robininthelabyrinth, all credit for the idea and many of the funniest lines go to her.
> 
> The title comes from "White Winter Hymnal" by the Fleet Foxes, a lovely, creepy song (here's a Pentatoniix cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o10drRI3VQ0). It's...look, there's snow in it, okay, and any fic with Leonard Snart demands a pun as a title.

Caitlin has been deeply, if distantly, endeared to her cousin Mikey ever since he ruined the Beauregard-O'Leary-Rory Family Reunion of 2002 by showing up wearing a hand-lettered shirt reading "The Gay Cousin".

Caitlin, who was thirteen at the time, had been bracing herself for eight hours straight of invasive personal questions, most of them about her applications to high schools. Seeing as thinking about applying to high schools--and how the high school she got into would determine the calibre of college she got into, and the college she got into would determine her med school options, and her med school would determine her entire success in life or whether she became a horrible failure who wasn't living up to the potential every teacher assured her mother she had--made Caitlin feel like puking, this was not her idea of a good time. 

Instead, though, Caitlin had only just finished putting the potato salad on the table (next to two bowls of coleslaw and at least six casseroles, a.k.a. The Whitest Dinner Ever) when she heard a furious hiss of " _ Michael _ !" from her aunt Catherine and turn to see Mikey at the door, beaming proudly, as an ever-widening circle of Carefully Not Looking spread around him. 

The shirt was black. The letters were sparkly purple and had clearly been made with some kind of children's puff paint. He'd run out of room down towards the end, so it really read more like "THE GAY COUsin." Mikey had always been tall, but he was, what, twenty-two now? And he towered over pretty much everyone in the room. Aunt Catherine was waving her hands around, clearly trying to find a way to say "that shirt is inappropriate" without opening herself up to being accused of having a problem with gay people, and the rest of the room was a silent, ginger mob of discomfort. 

Caitlin took advantage of the distraction to shove six dinner rolls into the pockets of her blazer, stuffed a piece of pie in her mouth so that no one could ask her any questions, and fled to the living room where the under-tens had been installed with Mario Kart. By the time her mother stopped explaining very loudly to everyone around her about how she hadn't had a problem with her gay roommate in college, not even in the seventies, Caitlin was nowhere to be found and could not be called upon to report her National Merit PSAT scores, her IQ aptitude test results, or how the judge at the middle school science fair competition had told her she was, quote, "very promising."

Instead she crushed Cousin Shannon on Rainbow Road, sent her small minions back to the dining room four times to bring her more food, and on the way out the door that night, gave Cousin Mikey a small smile and a hopefully-genuinely-supportive fistbump of thanks.

After that, Caitlin and Cousin Mikey had kind of an unspoken agreement to rescue each other whenever their families got together. Mikey had an anxiety problem (welcome to the club; Caitlin often feels like their entire extended family is a case study for a genetic component to anxiety), though she didn't really know exactly what tended to trigger it because they weren't actually that close. She can make some educated guesses however, thanks to the frankly horrible things Aunt Jess says when drunk, and Caitlin suspects that Mikey's anxiety is often along the lines of "no one will ever love me because I ruin everything"; sort of a counterpart to her own "if I don't keep Performing To My Potential, everything will be ruined and everyone will stop loving me," really. Given this aspect of shared experience, they tended to spend time switching off hiding in the bathroom at family events, him with a lighter and her trying really hard not to dig divots into her thighs with her fingernails, and when that happened they had a pact that the other one would guard the door and, if needed, pretend they really had to pee, no Aunt Jess Mikey isn't in there, why would he be in there, I think I saw him take some of the kids outside for piggyback rides actually, why don't you check there? 

Caitlin kept meaning to get to know better the members of her family she could actually stand, but there never seemed to be time. Her second year of med school she spent three months straight bombarding Mikey's email address with statistics on lung cancer and secondhand smoke damage until he promised that he was quitting and would only use his lighter for starting fires from now on, not lighting cigarettes. After that they tried to make tentative plans to hang out some time when his job--he worked, like, construction or something?--took him to Central, but the timing never worked out. Her mom demanded that all their relatives send Caitlin dumb congratulations cards when she achieved her degree (in her constant quest to use her daughter's success as a weapon in the one-up-manship war between her and her siblings), and Mikey sent a "Happy Bar Mitzvah!" one that was just random enough, and with a note that was just asshole-teasing enough, that Caitlin cracked the fuck up and kept it on her desk for weeks. 

She invited him to the particle accelerator unveiling, but he'd just split up with his boyfriend at that point and apparently "Lenny" got Central City in the breakup. She meant to reach out to him about that, because he sounded actually really upset about the whole thing and she wanted them to be the kind of family that said things like "I'm here if you want to talk about it," but then Ronnie died and everything, including good intentions about being a caring person, kind of stopped mattering for a while. 

Which brings her to this moment, blinking in the sudden light of no longer having a bag over her head, tied to a chair in a warehouse, and staring right into the startled eyes of Cousin Mikey who apparently fucking  _ kidnapped _ her. 

"Mikey????"

"...Caity-cat????"

"What the  _ actual fuck _ !" Her voices goes very shrieky when she's upset. It's a family trait. Mikey winces, because he can recognize a goddamn O'Leary Woman Warning Sign when he hears it.

"Okay, hang on--"

" _ You _ hang on, what the hell is this Mikey! I haven't seen you in three years and this is how you come say hi?? What, picking up the phone is too mainstream??? You grabbed me from a parking lot and dragged me away, do you know what that  _ does _ to someone mentally, the kinds of things I've been terrified are going to happen to me? Congrats, your m.o.'s main inspiration is apparently  _ serial rapists _ , that's good to know you  _ giant bag of dicks." _

By the time she's done shrieking all of that at him, the metal walls of the warehouse are echoing. She pauses, not because she's done but because she has temporarily used up all of her air, and into the brief silence Captain Cold, who is standing behind the now-very-uncomfortable-looking Cousin Mikey, says: 

"Mick. What the fuck."

Mikey runs a hand over his shaved head. 

"Aw hell Lenny, we've gone and kidnapped my damn cousin Caity."

This is Lenny? Captain fucking Cold is Lenny? Caitlin pauses in giving Mikey the stink eye to turn it on Cold instead. He gives her one back. It's pretty good, and Caitlin says that as a studied expert in Frigid Bitch Faces.

"Caitlin Snow is your cousin?"

"No my cousin is Caitlin  _ O'Leary _ . What the hell, Caity, doctors use stage names now or something?" Mikey mumbles. Caitlin turns her glare back on him. 

"I already had the name change paperwork filed when Ronnie...when he died. If I'd just canceled it, after, it would have been like I was taking it back. So I picked a new name." Cold smirks at her. Caitlin grits her teeth and adds, "I'm sorry, is that something you really get to judge me about,  _ Captain Cold _ ?"

"No need to be so frosty, Ms. Snow," he drawls. 

"It's Doctor Snow, actually," she snaps back. "And you and I are not  _ cool _ ." That was not a pun on purpose but Cold still looks delighted. That only makes her more annoyed, which in turn makes her mean. "Not when you're the guy who took off on my cousin for a year and a half because he got  _ cold feet _ ." Cold stops smirking very abruptly. 

"Why the hell does she know--"

"She's my  _ cousin _ !" Mikey protests yet again, like it's the only sentence he knows right now. 

"Who works with the Flash, apparently."

Oh yeah, and speaking of: 

"Yes I do, and you're not going to hurt him. Mikey let me out of these ropes and leave the Flash alone or I'm telling Grandma."

"Shit." Mikey glances at Cold, who gives him a very incredulous look. 

" _ Seriously _ , Mick?"

"Snart you've never met Granny O'Leary. 'Less we're killing Caity so she can't talk, we gotta play ball, because if this gets back to her…."

"Ugh,  _ fine _ ." Cold waves an imperious hand and Mikey crosses behind Caitlin's chair to untie her ropes. Her hands and then feet come free and she flexes them, reproachfully. 

"You know, I'm really disappointed Mikey."

"Oh  _ Christ _ ," sounds distinctly from behind her. Good, let him feel despair. 

"You told me you were a crusader for justice and only beat up assholes and homophobes." She tries to infuse all of her broken childhood dreams into her tone. Mikey circles back in front of her and rolls his eyes. Yeah, guilt trips have never really been very effective on him, she recalls. 

"That was definitely a lie I told you. Because you were, like, five."

"I was sixteen and you thought utilitarianism was a legitimate moral philosophy, so."

"Can we get back to the matter at hand please?" Captain Cold is looking long-suffering. "I have a hostage video to film, so if your cousin will just cooperate…"

"Uh, no? Like, decidedly not?"

"Look Caity, just do me a solid here?" Mikey makes the same face he's been making to weasel concessions out of their numerous aunts since they were kids. Unfortunately, Caitlin is wise to it. "We gotta lure the Flash out."

"Why? No seriously,  _ why _ ? What do you gain from killing, uh, him?" She almost said 'Barry'. Cold knows it, too, he's giving her a really considering look. She lifts her chin and ignores it. 

"Flash's running around like he owns the city. Gonna kick his ass so people know we do," Mikey rumbles. Caitlin can't decide whether she wants to smack him, or roll her eyes so hard they fall out of her head.   


"You know he doesn't care about who owns what, right? That's not who he is." Barry is competitive, but he's also collaborative. He pushes people to be better, he doesn't tell them to accept his dominance or get out. "If you didn't  _ hurt _ people, he wouldn't even care what you do."

"Ah, but then we wouldn't get to enjoy our little...contests. Going toe-to-toe with a superman...you've seen him in action. You have to admit, there's nothing else like that."

Oddly, there's something almost reminiscent of Barry in how Cold's eyes gleam. It's kind of the same expression Barry makes right before he decides to try running backwards at top speed, or, in fact, to fight someone like Leonard Snart. They're both such  _ weirdos _ , playing this overblown, hugely dramatic game of cops and--

Hm.

"Mikey I have a deal for you," she announces. 

"Oh?" Cold looks amused.

"Nngh," Mikey says, warily. Their family may be fucked up in a lot of ways, but one thing they all know is how to cut a deal. Caitlin has negotiated all of her own contracts--job, lease, insurance--since she was seventeen; before that she watched her mother reduce attorneys, loan managers, and once, memorably, a Jehovah's Witness, to quivering piles of jelly.

Mikey looks at Cold; Cold nods. Mikey sighs. "Okay Caity, shoot."

"You let me go and I set up the fight with the Flash that you want so badly. But before that, we place a little wager on the results of the fight."

Hah, she's totally got Cold hooked. He's trying to look disdainful but his eyes totally lit up. Mikey knows it too, from the indulgent look he's giving him. 

"What's the wager?"

"If you win, you get to give Flash three rules for his crimefighting in Central, and he has to follow them." Both their eyebrows shoot up. "But if he wins, he gives you three rules, and you don't break them."

Mikey whistles, long and slow. She's pretty sure that means he's impressed, which is kind of nice, in the sense that she used to look up to him a little bit. She's always wished she had a little less need to please everyone all the time, and a little more of his 'don't give a fuck' attitude. 

"Got a lot of faith in your boy, there, don't you," says Cold. He arches one eyebrow. Caitlin arches hers back. 

"Yes I do. What, you don't have the same level of confidence?" Nyah nyah, double-dare you. 

"...I like you, Snow." Cold makes the proclamation magnanimously and slightly mockingly, but when she glances at Mikey he's grinning, so she suspects it may actually be sincere. 

"Great. Since we're buddies now, why don't we seal our deal with a little collateral."

"Aw, don't you trust me?"

"No."  _ Duh _ . "Turn the cold gun's location service back on line. We know you disabled it after last time. As long as it's on, we know you're still interested in the deal...and we know where to find you if you break it."

"Hm. And if  _ you _ break it?"

Cold's tone is tending towards icy, dangerously so, but Mikey still seems plain chuffed about this whole business, looking from Caitlin to "Lenny" and back like he's watching a tennis match and loving it. Then again, he's always kind of found conflict hilarious, which is an important survival skill in their family. 

"We're the good guys," she reminds Cold, but before he can do more than scowl, adds on, "and also I'll tell you my home address. If we back out, you'll know where to find me."

She thinks that's a pretty solid offer, but Cold rolls his eyes. "I'm not sure you're aware, but there's this thing called the Internet. I can find your home address in two minutes, probably less."

Well that's terrifying. Caitlin makes a mental note to have Cisco scrub all of her personal info from the face of the planet, as soon as possible. 

"Oh." She casts around for another option. 

"How about this?" Cold's eyes gleam, bright and greedy. "Tell me the Flash's name."

"I don't know the Flash's name," she tries, but neither of them are buying it from how they're smirking at her. "Okay fine I do but I'm not telling you."

"Then there's no deal." Cold shrugs. "And we're still taking you hostage."

"Mikey--!"

"Fair's fair, Caity, we heard you out and you didn't come through with a compelling offer."

He's right. Her own mother would probably support them taking her hostage right now, and Grandma would totally not be on her side if she ran and spilled the whole story. Caitlin bites her lip, hard, and tries to think. 

"Okay! Okay, how about this. I can't tell you his name, but I can introduce you, like civilized people, tell him the deal, and let him decide if he wants to share it or not. That's a lot of leeway, Cold. You're wanted for  _ murder _ ."

Cold wrinkles his nose about that, which is interesting. Not so much like he feels bad, but more like he's a little embarrassed and trying not to…

Hah, he totally didn't mean to kill that guard, did he. Captain Cold got carried away with his new toy and made a  _ mistake _ . 

"Or should that be manslaughter?" Caitlin asks, sweetly, and Mikey bursts out laughing at the pout on Cold's face. 

"Your cousin is worse than my sister," he grumbles at Mikey, which Caitlin is going to take as a compliment and also as useful info since they didn't even know he  _ had _ a sister. "All right Dr. Snow, we have a deal."

 

Mikey wears his Gay Cousin shirt when she brings him to meet the Flash. Barry is speechless for a good six seconds when he sees it, pointing mutely with his mouth agape, then turns to his foster sister. 

"Iris…!"

"Yes, okay, I'll make you one for the next family reunion."


End file.
